The present invention relates to the electrical, electronic and computer arts, and, more particularly, to modeling of steam assisted gravity drainage wells.
Steam assist gravity drainage (SAGD) refers to a method of extracting bitumen from oil sands. A SAGD well includes two parallel horizontal pipes, one above (e.g., less deep than) the other. Steam is injected into the upper pipe, called the injection pipe, to heat the surrounding earth. Heating reduces the viscosity of the bitumen contained in the oil sands allowing it to flow under gravity. This flow of bitumen and water condensate is collected and extracted by pumping using the lower pipe, called the producer pipe.
Costs in a SAGD operation are dominated by the cost of heating the steam relative to the amount of bitumen extracted. Thus, there is a long-felt but unmet need to model the behavior of the SAGD well with the aim of optimizing the production of bitumen with the least amount of steam. The inventors are unaware of any systematic data-driven predictive modeling for these kinds of data.